In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011 (Wesleyan Poetry) - Hardcover

Gizzi, Peter

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9780819574305: In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011 (Wesleyan Poetry)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819574309 ISBN 13: 9780819574305

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2014

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Since his celebrated first book of poetry, Peter Gizzi has been hailed as one of the most significant and distinctive voices writing today. Gathered from over five collections, and representing close to twenty-five years of work, the poems in this generous selection strike a dynamic balance of honesty, emotion, intellectual depth and otherworldly resonance-in Gizzi's work, poetry itself becomes a primary ground of human experience. Haunted, vibrant, and saturated with luminous detail, Gizzi's poetry enlists the American vernacular in a magical and complex music. In Defense of Nothing is an immensely valuable introduction to the work of this extraordinary and singular poet. Check for the online reader's companion at indefenseofnothing.site.weleyan.edu.

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Review:

"As elegant as they are profound, these poems represent close to 25 years of work. In this substantial volume, Gizzi regales us with minimalist narrative, long lyrics and prose poems which are studies in human perception. Gizzi's central theme is how the human mind converts objects and lived experiences into poetry. For Gizzi, poetry itself is a field of human experience. ... As a whole, Gizzi's In Defense of Nothing affirms the notion that poetry is a form of salvation for those who are willing to do the hard work of turning perceptions into the 'second tongue we call grammar'. It is a book worthy of all who love art and all who love to express themselves through poetry."--Sonja James, The Journal

"Gizzi's poetry is 'silly with clarity', infused with a restless vernacular that can elevate the mundane while making the impossible tangible."--Publishers Weekly

"In Defense of Nothing Selected Poems 1987-2011 splendidly champions Gizzi as a major force in the ever-expanding vastness of the poetry world. His well-earned spot as an integral influential force of our time is thus firmly staked out."--Patrick James Dunagan, Bookslut

"[T]his collection is a well-curated cross-section of a career that has always resisted categorization, borrowing from lyric, narrative, and avant-garde traditions. ... Gizzi [is] a poet whose interest lies in articulating his experience of the world in all its disorienting glory."--Academy of American Poets

"[A] significant retrospective of the work of poet Peter Gizzi. [It] samples nearly twenty-five years of his poems but finds a new order and a new context for them."--Alex Dueben, Paris Review

"I have been enamored of Gizzi's work for some time and to have such a generous and encompassing dose of his poems in one book is a true and inexhaustible gift. I love how these poems open and open. The result is a poetic line that disorients as well as recalibrates the reading toward other possibilities, the way, as Gizzi writes, 'death and the imagination equals life itself.'"--Ocean Vuong, Poetry Foundation/Harriet Blog, "Reading List: December 2014"

"Gizzi's poems lead you to think that building that flower would not only create something enjoyable but also make something useful. It will lead you somewhere unexpected. It could save the day."--Tim Wood, Colorado Review

About the Author:

PETER GIZZI is the author of six collections of poetry including Threshold Songs and In Defense of Nothing. He works at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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